Social Media and the Quest for Democracy

Abstract

The widespread usage, consumption, and production of social media have sparked serious debate about its role in stimulating, cultivating, and influencing the shape, depth, and impact of democracy. How does and can engagement in and with social media lead to citizen participation in seeking to address issues that significantly affect people, notably social inequalities, racism, sexism, classism,

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“…Social media is an exemplary feature of this new environment and can help us draw out the fundamental question if greater media, communication, and online involvement can lead to more robust, critical democratic forms of citizen participation. Elsewhere, with colleagues (Carr, Daros, Cuervo, and Thésée 2020), I describe some of the overlapping components, processes, and concerns that help frame the context for social media, fake news, and citizen participation.…”

“…With the avalanche of fake accounts, fake (bot) users, and fake (or tampered with) algorithms, the terrain is fertile for fake news. This is especially the case if users, consumers, and citizens are conditioned to not question or verify what comes their way, are reluctant to disbelief 'official' sources, are ignorant, are disinterested, or are enveloped in turbulent news cycles with complex, nuanced, voluminous information, for which they are unable to decipher the diverse and divergent realities emanating from a particular situation, event, or reality (Carr, Daros, Cuervo, and Thésée 2020). Citizen participation requires critical engagement, and constructing media/political literacy, however defined, needs to be considered in order to better underpin meaningful forms of democracy (Carr, Cuervo, and Daros 2019).…”

“…At the same time, I acknowledge that the traditional media is anchored in biases and hegemonic trappings but am troubled that the 'fake news' caravan seeks to whitewash anything that may bring contrary dimensions to the debate, especially in relation to revealing, exposing, and countering mainstream narratives related to war, conflict, racism, inequalities, and the like. Democracy 1.0 had a relatively controlled audience, whereas Democracy 2.0 has let the floodgates open, and this means that there are now opportunities for critique, solidarity, and mobilization that may not have been as readily available previously, including diverse social movements that have taken off through social media (Carr, Daros, Cuervo, and Thésée 2020). These social movements can be a force of change in society at the local, national, and global levels where governments and international institutions are unwilling, unable, or unmotivated to respond to the needs of the population.…”